Lisbon II - How it pushes the Militarisation & the Armaments Industry
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Tuesday September 22, 2009 15:51
by Joe Higgins MEP - Socialist Party
info at joehiggins dot eu
It's not too late to get active in the campaign - volunteer at the link below.
Joe Higgins, Socialist MEP.
Many issues have come up so far in the Lisbon debate, some very relevant, some less so. The key issues the Socialist Party have been raising so far are workers rights, public services and miltarisation. Elsewhere Joe Higgins has looked at the issue of workers' rights (http://www.joehiggins.eu/510) and public services (http://www.joehiggins.eu/489). Here, he goes into precisely how Lisbon boosts the armaments industry and is another step towards a militarised EU.
The absence of any detailed debate on the new provisions in the Lisbon Treaty concerning armaments policy and military strategy is quite alarming. This arises on the one hand from the reluctance of the 'Yes' side to highlight a face of the European Union which many Irish people would find revolting and on the other a blatant failure by the media to analyse these provisions.
It should be a matter of massive debate that, for the first time, the EU armaments industry is given a formal place in an EU Treaty. The role of the European Defence Agency is essentially to co-ordinate the armaments industry in the EU, making it an integral part of EU operations. Its tasks include: ‘implementing any measures needed to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the defence sector’ and to participate ‘in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy’ (Art. 42 TEU).
The EU armaments industry is the guilty secret that the EU political establishment likes to keep hidden. The major EU arms-exporting countries - France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Britain - account for one third of the world's arms deals. Their products include military helicopters, submarines which carry nuclear missiles and aircraft bombers. The largest armaments company in the United Kingdom, BAE, is currently in contention with other major contractors to get a contract with India for 130 Eurofighter combat aircraft. BAE already has a contract with Saudi Arabia for 72 Eurofighters.
Related Links:
- Assist with Joe Higgins & the Socialist Party's anti-Lisbon campaigning
- Read the pamphlet by the Peace and Neutrailty alliance on why they oppose the Lisbon Treaty
- Get involved in the broad left No to Lisbon Campaign
- Keep track of the latest articles from Joe on Lisbon throughout the campaign
Saudi Arabia is one of the most vicious and repressive regimes on the face of the planet. In Pakistan and India, tens of millions live in abject squalor. Supplying weaponry on a grand scale to these countries flies blatantly in the face of the ideals which the EU says is stands for: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights”. (Art. 2, Treaty on European Union.)
The remit of the EDA regarding assisting European arms manufacturers to sell their wares is to ‘ensure that European companies benefit from these economic opportunities’ (A Strategy for a Stronger and more Competitive European Defence Industry, EU Commission Communication December 2007)
What this means is the European Union is putting in its Treaties a provision endorsing itself as a major arms merchant for the world.
How these provisions escape the notice of the Christian churches which have been endorsing the Lisbon Treaty is something they should explain. To have major economic power bloc blatantly providing for more criminal wastage of resources on weapons of massive destruction in the face of massive poverty and destitution on our globe should surely be a cause for strenuous objection
Internal Military Alliances - A Dangerous new Departure
The provision for 'Permanent Structured Cooperation' which provided essentially for internal military alliances inside the EU 'with a view to the most demanding missions’ is a new provision with alarming implications for the future, yet it is scarcely mentioned in the debate except buy those objecting to the military and foreign policy changes in the Lisbon treaty. The kinds of missions involved are referred to in Article 43 (TEU): “…joint disarmament operations, military advice and assistance tasks, tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking and post-conflict stabilisation”.
Although it would require a unanimous vote in the EU Council to launch a mission involving the countries involved in such an alliance, once it is underway the conduct of the mission would be solely in the hands of the member states concerned. However their actions would be in the name of the EU as a whole and each Member State would be obliged to support them.
The changes in the Lisbon Treaty to military strategy and to the Common Foreign Policy are designed to allow the EU to make its weight felt in the international forum as it jockeys in the decades ahead with other world powers for markets, raw materials and political influence. None of this is in the interests of ordinarily people in Europe or throughout the world.
Related Links:
IFPAL member arrested over "offensive" No To Lisbon sign outside Israeli Embassy | Lisbon Referendum – Some Truth and Plenty of Lies | Voting NO to Llsbon 2 | Big Business Out to Buy a 'Yes' to Lisbon | Lisbon Treaty: Three Strikes, You’re Out | VOTE NO to Lisbon - Raft on the Liffey Launch | Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon put their case to the public in Dublin's Grafton Street | Green Party U-Turn on a Democratic EU | The Lisbon Treaty and the Triumph of Technocracy | Debut of Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon outside Dublin EU Parliament Offices | 13 Things the Lisbon Treaty Would Do | The Legal guarantees on Lisbon Treaty will not change treaty - a propaganda stunt to mislead voters | Dáil shouldn't have inferior Lisbon Treaty powers to German Parliament, controlling ministers | The Lisbon Treaty, Alan Shatter and the guys in hoods! | Lisbon Treaty News: German Constitutional Court delays Germany’s ratification of the Lisbon Treaty | No EU Guarantees Can Change Thrust Toward Militarisation in Lisbon Treaty | The Gurantees: Comment by Jens-Peter Bonde | Spoofing the Irish media and public with Lisbon “guarantees” that guarantee nothing | Supposed ‘hard fight’ to secure guarantees on Lisbon Treaty: a clever tactic to mislead says McKenna | Lisbon: Round Two - A bosses charter, with or without 'guarantees' | The Lisbon Assurances - A Closer Look
No to Lisbon Groups List can be found here.
Vote NO to a Miltarised EU
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24Comments are welcome on the photo also, especially from woman.
Happiness Is A Warm Gun - Photo © Paul Mattsson 2003 - Copyleft (free to use) for campaigners - Taken at an arms trade show in London.
I think Militarisation hasn't really featured in the current debate on Lisbon 2 so this article is extremely welcome.
What isn't welcome are your sexist comments Michael
"Comments are welcome on the photo also, especially from woman"
I am far from being an SP supporter but welcome this article -- an overdue comment on the additional militarisation of the EU which Lisbon Treaty would foster.
The EU leaders do dream of an EU able to contend with the USA, Russia and China for slices of the world -- that was always part of the rationale for the EU with its "common defence" policy. Selling arms to countries is both part of that process and also fills the pockets of the arms manufacturers and the bankers. Giving arms exporters a formal place within the Lisbon Treaty is to accelerate this process.
These manufacturers selling arms to countries is not only immoral and against the interests of working people around the world but also involves politically and otherwise supporting the regimes of those countries, invariably right-wing and usually murderous dictatorships. So many military dictatorships and monarchies in Africa, Latin America and Middle East were supplied with weapons by these merchants of death. I will always remember seeing in a Kurdish village in "Turkey" the effects of a visit from a German Panzer flame-throwing armoured vehicle supplied to the Turkish Army.
Of course the EU talk about "military advice and assistance" to other countries. Let's not forget that the biggest longest war since World War Two, the Vietnam War, was run in its early days with "military advisors" from the US. As lampooned by American folk singer Tom Paxton back then:
"And Lyndon Johnston told the nation:
'have no fear of escalation,
I am trying everyone to please!
Though this isn't really war,
we're sending fifty thousand more
to help save Vietnam from Vietnamese'!"
No to Lisbon and No to Increased Militarisation of the EU!
Of course I agree with every word that Joe Higgins writes here, but wish that he had referred to the Common Foreign and Security Policy in more than a passing way. CFSP is the context within which the militarisation of the EU is taking place. The surrender of an independent Irish foreign policy should be lamented not on nationalist but on internationalist grounds: EU and US foreign policy have converged during the Bush years (contrary to the myth that sees the EU as having provided some kind of counterbalance), NATO is becoming the equivalent of an EU army (Bertie Ahern dragged Ireland into NATO's "Partnership for Peace" without the referendum he had promised), and the US/EU have joined hands as Israel's unconditional guarantors, regardless of the abhorrent nature of its crimes. The result is a permanent "clash of civilisations" guaranteeing the arms manufacturers a permanent state of profitable belligerence. Ireland shouldn't merely "opt out" of these policies, but should forcibly oppose them and seek allies among the less imperially-minded EU countries in order to do so.
....the way this site doesn't work sometimes is when people shoot the messenger and miss the message (intentionally or not) and also use pseudoynms. I was just trying to draw attention to the background image (maybe it's not clear enough) of a woman and the seductive way it's used to sell death, it's obvious target being young men. 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' is what this background picture says to me, I find it sexist and derogatory to woman. I think it also exposes the feeble mindedness and ignorance of some men and the way the female form is used in advertising again and again to sell all sorts of products.
Would you care to comment please 'woman', will you tell me what you find sexist about my 'comments' above. Or maybe you are just a troll, editors decision.
I do welcome men's comments also.
I hope we get back to the main points of Joe's article after this.
2. National Commemoration Day, Kilmainham, Dublin Ireland. - Photo © Michael Gallagher 2006 - Copyleft (free to use) for the VOTE NO campaign. Please credit the photographers where possible if used.
The US has moved its 'borders' into Shannon Airport - I quote a US statement on the matter - and already have a permanent military presence there. No one in Ireland was asked, as I recall, about either predicament. So who owns Ireland? Who permitted the United States to extend its border into Irish territory through the utilisation of an emigration facility? The position with Europe will not be much different, only it may arguably be a tad more transparent. On the other hand, if Ireland were to ask the Yanks to leave Shannon, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that they would exercise sanctions first and bomb is later. Nonsense, you say! America's record in relation to its friends is the relationship of any scho9olyard bully: do as I say and you'll be my friend, refuse me something and we are enemies. We must at all costs say NO to Lisbon II. And we must be extension say no to the US.
The greatest shame will be if Ireland votes Yes this time, it will show the Europeans what cowards we are. The fear campaign of the politicians and the EU will be no excuse for a people that prostitutes it's principles.
You can listen the complete movie (in 5 parts) of a very interesting Speech from the leading German legal EU-expert Prof. Dr. Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider (excellent synchronized English version)!
#1 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIzfZvKWOVw&hl=de
#2 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anLWgjqnnIA
#3 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clXtF9aFrns&feature=related
#4 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqaBuv4rgUk&feature=related
#5 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHy0KH6RS1o&feature=related
Schachtschneider is Professor for Law in Germany and
the leading representative of the Anti-EU-Movement in Central Europe.
He is a retired lecturer (eremitus) on state law and state theory and has become somewhat famous for challenging (successfully) the various attempts (Maastricht, EU constitution, Lisbon treaty) to promote a European Constitution on the grounds of those attempts not being compliant with the German Grundgesetz (Constitution). Schachtschneider is well renowned even amongst his critics.
Dear Irish People!
I request You: YOU ARE THE ONLY NATION who is allowed to VOTE !
PLEASE VOTE "NO" - for free European Nations !!
Someone at the meeting last night made the point that Energy is one of the ares where we will be losing our veto.
That information has not got any publicity in this debate yet the future consequences are painfully obvious to anyone who has been watching events in this area.
the estimated value of our oil and gas amounts to in excess of €400 billion.
The new areas AREAS TO WHICH QUALIFIED MAJORITY VOTING APPLIES ie where we loose our veto
includes energy policy and energy infrastructure - so if they want to introduce nuclear power they call the shots, if they need our gas and oil they can have it at even more knock down prices! After Lisbon it becomes law, superceeding our law.
even in wind energy/wave energy we will end up with only a fraction of it's worth.
Here in Ireland we are being subjected to the same 'shock and awe' tactics employed by Pinochet over Chile.
Scare the shit out of the people, bring them to their knees then introduce legally binding laws to create a totalitarian state that in desperation they will vote for.
Democracy in new in Europe - remember Franco, Degalle, Moussillini, Stalin, Tito - we are much more familiar with facism than with democracy. Is it to be facism with a democratic window dressing?
Eillers last musing is as over the top as his previous ones. Pinochet employed torture, mass killings of political opponents and mass detentions. Unless I am missing something these techniques have yet to be employed here. It was to get away from fascism and Stalinism that the European project was launched. It is associated with figures s like Konrad Adenauer, Schumann and Monet – not Stalin, Franco or their ilk. They believed an international and collective approach among democratic states would safeguard democracy, prosperity and justice and avoid the problems that gave rise to the dictators and their wars in the 1930s.
I´m from Germany and like 500 Millions Europeans I can`t vote about the Lisbon treaty. You are only 3 million people who can vote about freedom and souvereignity of the European countries and only you have the chance to say NO.
A German song for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no_Pv7McXVg
"We know that nine out of 10 people will not have read the Constitution and will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes."
~Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Belgian Prime Minister and Vice-President of the EU Convention, Irish Times, 2 June 2004 ~
There You can listen an absolutely new movie (24th Sept. 2009: lecture carried forward in Dublin) with Prof. Schachtschneider once more:
A short centralisation of the essential points why the Irish people
should vote "NO"!
(Schachtschneider is Professor for Law in Germany and
the leading representative of the Anti-EU-Movement in Central Europe!)
See the new video:
#1 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdLYmp42UTk
#2 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTHk9oDV92U
#3 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glpdqca-Pls
#4 of 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSyrdYzmPt0
See also this video (since 1 week):
#1 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIzfZvKWOVw&hl=de
#2 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anLWgjqnnIA
#3 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clXtF9aFrns&feature=related
#4 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqaBuv4rgUk&feature=related
#5 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHy0KH6RS1o&feature=related
I think the posters above are stretching credulity in saying that the EU will take our gas and oil and our wind and wave power should it get developed. Neither did the meeting did give Mr Costelloe a chance to get his points accross.
I will grant the emerald elvis youtube return to sender is very good.
JOBS:. dailymailonline EU Mums Not allowed to leave children with a friend while you work part-time.
EXPENSES: dailytelegraph & The wives living it up at our expense
We vote NO!
The Lisbon Treaty is an attempt to establish a European superstate without asking Europeans for their permission. The approval of the Treaty of Lisbon will mean the transfer of the remainder of the decision-making power of European capitals to Brussels, where far away from us all a bureaucratic machine will decide our fates. The approval of the Treaty of Lisbon will mean a change for the worse, which will affect all of us. The Treaty of Lisbon, previously known as the European Constitution, was already voted on in France and the Netherlands, where the public voted a resounding NO. Then, the content of this document was apparently altered, but by less than a percent while, first and foremost, its name was altered to shove it down the throats of European nations. Only the fully democratic society of Ireland was given the opportunity to vote on the Treaty. The Irish also gave it a clear NO, but the European elite disregarded the vote and opted to bomb the Irish with propaganda, and to force them to re-vote on this defective document, a clear violation of all accepted democratic procedures and principles. This document was already rejected three times in separate democratic votes and, despite this, it is being forced upon Ireland, using economic blackmail, various forms of coercion and propaganda.
The European Union spends over 2 billion Euros annually on Propaganda. One shouldn't then be surprised at the massive pro-EU advertising campaigns, which remain unanswered and without rebuttal by society.
Free people and free nations cannot accede to such undemocratic coercion.
We, Polish bloggers who acutely follow European politics, have decided to join our fellow Irish bloggers to appeal to the Irish public to vote against the Treaty of Lisbon. A NO vote is not only a vote against the numerous pitfalls of the Treaty, but is also a vote against the methods used to bring it to life.
We thus appeal to the Irish to once again vote NO.
Vote NO in the referendum.
Vote NO for your own sake, vote NO for ours!
"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free". -Goethe
I recommend a No vote, but do as you please. Dont look at the media because they are biased. They are in favour of the political elite and their corporate masters. Why would you listen to the people who got Ireland into this mess? They dont give a f**k about the working class! They bail out their banking buddies, while the working class take the toll. They live the high life, while most working class are having harder times these days. A Yes vote will centralise power into the hands of the EU poltical elite, which is quite corrupt, but you wont see that on the news, but there are many MEPs who speak of this. You only need to look back at history to see what the centralisation of power can do! "Power corrupts, and absolute power, corrupts absolutely". "If you forget, history is doomed to repeat itself".
Excuse me for my little rant, but do you think its democratic that only Ireland has a say in the future of Europe? Why has it not been put to all the people of Europe? Because most people dont want it. Television and media is a system of indoctrination, controlled by corporations, who at the end of the day only care of the bottom line, which is PROFIT, and that comes from the corporations that give them all their advertising revenue. As i said at the top -
"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free". -Goethe
We aint rocking in a free world. Just look around and see the state of affairs!!!
Be wise, and dont be fooled. Im afraid of the Europe that is rising at the moment!!! And Im no fool...
Vote No, dont be fooled by those gombeens, reaping profits, while you suffer!!!
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/94238 - Vote No To Lisbon II
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/94162 - Lisbon II - How it pushes the Militarisation & the Armaments Industry
http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=1144 - Long Live The New Union?
http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=1133 - Brussels lobbyists have £445,000 whip-round to push Irish ‘Yes’ vote
http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=1131 - http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=1131
http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=1106 - Patricia McKenna on the Lisbon Treaty Guarantees
www.people.ie
Check out this song
From a report published by the transnational institute this week . the full report is available for downl;oad at http://www.tni.org/
"Despite the often benign intent behind collaborative European ‘research’ into integrated land, air, maritime, space and cyber-surveillance systems, the EU’s security and R&D policy is coalescing around a high-tech blueprint for a new kind of security. It envisages a future world of red zones and green zones; external borders controlled by military force and internally by a sprawling network of physical and virtual security checkpoints; public spaces, micro-states and ‘mega events’ policed by high-tech surveillance systems and rapid reaction forces; ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘crisis management’ missions that make no operational distinction between the suburbs of Basra or the Banlieue; and the increasing integration of defence and national security functions at home and abroad.
It is not just a case of “sleepwalking into” or “waking up to” a “surveillance society”, as the Britain’s Information Commissioner famously warned, it feels more like turning a blind eye to the start of a new kind of arms race, one in which all the weapons are pointing inwards. Welcome to the Neo-ConOpticon."
The NeoConOpticon is a new report from the
Transnational Institute (TNI) and Statewatch by Ben
Hayes. It examines the development and
implementation of the European Security Research
Programme (ESRP), a €1.4 billion EU ‘R&D’ budget
line focused predominantly on surveillance and other
law enforcement technologies. It reveals the extent to
which the design of the programme has been
outsourced to some of the corporations that have
most to gain from its implementation.
The research examined all 85 of the projects funded
under the EU security research programme to the end
of 2008, together with several thousand related EUfunded
R&D projects from other thematic
programmes. What also emerges from the
bewildering array of contracts, acronyms and EU
policies is the development of a powerful new
‘interoperable’ European surveillance system that will
be used for civilian, commercial, police, security and
defence purposes alike.
Defence giants including Thales, Finmeccanica, EADS, Saab and Sagem Défénsé Sécurité are
amongst a host of corporations to which the European Commission has turned to help set the
agenda for security research, develop Homeland Security strategies for Europe, and bring the
relevant security technologies ‘to market’. The report also reveals the full extent of Israel’s
participation in a rapidly developing EU security-industrial complex, which is controversial in the
light of widespread criticism of Israel's security policies and human rights record.
This comprehensive audit of the ESRP shows that there has been only minimal democratic
scrutiny of the programme and even less monitoring of its implementation. Ad hoc bodies
created outside the formal EU decision-making structure like the “Group of Personalities”,
“Security Research Advisory Board” and “Security Research and Innovation Forum” have
instituted a ‘revolving door’ between multinational defence and IT contractors and government
officials tasked with developing security policies at national and EU level.
The explicit aim of these bodies has been the integration of the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of
‘Homeland Security’. Despite the stated commitment of the ESRP to the protection of privacy
and civil liberties, critical civil society organisations, including privacy and civil liberties
advocates, have been conspicuous by their absence. This framework of governance has
promoted a range of security technologies that could engender systematic violations of
fundamental rights.
NeoConOpticon: The EU Security-Industrial Complex
Executive Summary
The NeoConOpticon is a follow-up to Arming Big Brother, a briefing paper on the European
Security Research Programme published in 2006. The (ESRP) is a seven year programme
predicated on the need to deliver new security enhancing technologies to the Union’s member
states in order to protect EU citizens from every conceivable threat to their security. It runs from
2007 to 2013 as part of the EU’s ‘FP7’ ‘framework programme’ for European research.
Arming Big Brother set out a number of concerns about the then pending ESRP, including the
implicit threat posed to civil liberties and fundamental rights by EU ‘research’ into surveillance
and other security technologies. The report was also highly critical of the corporate influence on
the EU security research programme and warned of various dangers in actively pursuing a
‘security-industrial complex’ in Europe.
The NeoConOpticon revisits the ESRP and examines its development and implementation to
date. The title is a play on Jeremy Bentham’s “panopticon” design for an all-seeing prison (used
by French philosopher Michel Foucault as a metaphor for the way in which surveillance acts to
discipline and control society) and the right to limitless profit-making at the heart of increasingly
neo-conservative EU homeland security and defence policies.
The first part of the report examines the development of the European Security Research
Programme. It shows the way in which design of the ESRP has been largely outsourced to
corporations and other private interests that have much to gain from its implementation. It also
shows the extent to which key actors within the arms industry are repositioning themselves as
“Homeland Security” providers, and the EU’s efforts to support this transition.
The second part of the report focuses on the implementation of the ESRP and the broader
consolidation of the EU security-industrial complex. It examines specific security technologies
and vendors and their relationship to EU research projects and EU policy measures.
Key findings:
1) A system designed by lobbyists, for lobbyists: In addition to enhancing European
‘security’, the ESRP also has the explicit aim of fostering the growth of a lucrative and
globally competitive ‘homeland security’ industry in Europe. This has engendered a
structural conflict of interests at the heart of the ESRP arising from a failure to separate the
development and implementation of the security research programme. By creating various
“stakeholder platforms” of the “supply-and-demand sides” of security technology
(respectively: corporations and state agencies), the EU has effectively outsourced the
design of the security research agenda, inviting Europe’s largest defence and IT contractors
and other private interests to shape the priorities of the ESRP and the annual calls for
proposals, and then apply for the money on offer.
2) Defence giants and military research institutes in key advisory positions: The
European Security Research and Innovation Forum (ESRIF) is the current “multistakeholder”
platform to bring together the demand and supply sides of the homeland
security market to develop the blueprint for future security technologies. It is due to present
its final report on 29 September 2009 in Stockholm. ESRIF is comprised of 11 working
groups, a plenary committee and some 660 consultants, two-thirds of whom are drawn from
the private security sector. A core group of multinational defence contractors including
EADS, Finmeccanica, Thales, Sagem and the lobby group ASD (the AeroSpace and
Defence Industries Association of Europe), together with military research institutes
including TNO (Netherlands) and FOI (Sweden), has supplied a great deal of time and
expertise to the European Commission and occupies key seats in the ESRIF structure.
3) Defence industry profiting from security research contracts: Of 85 EU security research
contracts awarded to the end of 2008 and worth some €210 million, 40 projects (47%) were
led by companies that primarily service the defence sector.
4) Five core missions, one high-tech agenda: The current framework for security research
under FP7 was set out by ESRIF’s predecessor, ESRAB (the European Security Research
Advisory Board), which identified five core ‘mission areas’ for EU R&D: ‘border security’,
‘protection against terrorism and organised crime’, ‘critical infrastructure protection’,
‘restoring security in case of crisis’ and ‘integration, connectivity and interoperability’. For
each of these apparently distinct topics, the EU R&D agenda is strikingly similar: introduce
surveillance capacities using every viable surveillance technology on the market; institute
identity checks and authentication protocols based on biometric ID systems; deploy a range
of detection technologies and techniques at all ID control points; use high-tech
communications systems to ensure that law enforcement agents have total information
awareness; use profiling, data mining and behavioural analysis to identify suspicious people;
use risk assessment and modelling to predict (and mitigate) human behaviour; ensure rapid
‘incident response’; then intervene to neutralise the threat, automatically where possible.
Finally, ensure all systems are fully interoperable so that technological applications being
used for one mission can easily be used for all the others.
5) Securitising research, expanding the ESRP: The objectives of the European Security
Research Programme reflect the over-representation of private interests in the governance
of the ESRP. Annual calls for proposals favouring the pursuit of high-tech, high-cost
homeland security solutions over critical research and social justice based responses to
security ‘threats’. The FP7 programme has allotted an additional €200 million per year for
space research, which includes a significant security component, and established further
budget lines for critical infrastructure protection, so-called ‘migration management’, IT
security and counter-terrorism research. ‘Security research’ also crops up in other thematic
areas of the FP7 programme – food, energy, transport, information and communications
technology, nanotechnology and the environment, for example, inevitably includes food
security, energy security, transport security and so on.
6) ESRP-supported technologies could engender systematic violations of fundamental
rights: The ESRP is promoting the development of a range of technologies that implicitly
favour the demands of government over the rights of individuals, and could engender
systematic violations of fundamental rights. These systems include surveillance and profiling
technologies, an apparently infinite desire to collect and analyse personal data for law
enforcement purposes, automated targeting systems and satellite and space-based
surveillance. The use of these high-tech surveillance systems is seen as potentially
ubiquitous, for everything from law enforcement to environmental monitoring to earth
observation; from border control to crowd control to traffic control.
7) Obsession with surveillance and border control: The ESRP is predicated around an
obsession with surveillance and high-tech border control systems. The €20 million TALOS
project, for example, will develop and field test “a mobile, modular, scalable, autonomous
and adaptive system for protecting European borders” using both aerial and ground
unmanned vehicles, supervised by a command and control centre”. According to the TALOS
project contract, these specially adapted combat robots “will undertake the proper measures
to stop the illegal action almost autonomously with supervision of border guard officers”. A
further €30 million has been spent on R&D projects into high-tech border surveillance,
including STABORSEC (Standards for Border Security Enhancement), which recommended
no less than 20 detection, surveillance and biometric technologies for standardisation at the
EU level; the OPERAMAR project on the “interoperability of European and national maritime
surveillance assets”; the WIMA2 project on “Wide Maritime Area Airborne Surveillance”; and
EFFISEC, on “Efficient Integrated Security Checkpoints for land, border and port security”.
Among the key beneficiaries are Sagem, the Thales Group and Finmeccanica companies.
8) ESRP support for the implementation of biometric ID systems: EU legislation
mandating the collection, storage and inclusion of biometric data in travel documents is also
supported by a number of security ‘research’ projects. Having taken the decision to
introduce compulsory fingerprinting in identity documents, the development of the
framework for the implementation of biometric identification systems is effectively being
outsourced to the companies and lobby groups promoting the technological infrastructure.
Among the main beneficiaries of numerous EU R&D projects on the implementation of
biometric identification systems is the European Biometrics Forum, an umbrella group of
suppliers “whose overall vision is to establish the European Union as the World Leader in
Biometrics Excellence by addressing barriers to adoption and fragmentation in the
marketplace”.
9) Funding the EU’s space race: Galileo and Kopernikus: Prominent multinational
corporations have also played a central role in the development of Galileo (the EU’s GPS
and satellite tracking system) and Kopernicus (the EU’s earth observation system). Galileo
was once lauded as the world’s first would-be civilian GPS system, but military objectives
are now central to its development and deployment. Kopernicus began life as the EU’s
GMES (global monitoring environmental security) system but its scope has also recently
been extended to cover law enforcement and military applications. Among the main
beneficiaries of the EU’s space programme are two of the largest European space-industrial
actors: EADS and Thales Alenia Space.
10) Covert programme for unmanned aerial vehicles or ‘drones’: The EU has also
funded what amounts to a covert programme favouring the introduction of UAVs (unmanned
aerial vehicles or ‘drones’) for military, law enforcement and civilian purposes. More than a
dozen research projects and studies championing the development and implementation of
UAV systems have been commissioned by the EU, despite the current ban on their use in
European airspace and the absence of public debate about the legitimacy or desirability of
subsidising their introduction. Among the primary contractors are world-leading suppliers of
combat UAVs like Israel Aerospace Industries, Dassault Aviation, Thales, EADS and
Boeing.
11) Prevalence of Israeli security experts in ESRP: Israel, which participates in the EU
framework research programmes under the terms of a 2000 Cooperation Agreement, also
features prominently in the ESRP. Of 46 security research contracts awarded in the first
year of the FP7, Israeli actors or entities are participating in ten of the projects, leading four
of them. The Counter Terrorism Bureau (CTB) of the National Security Council of the State
of Israel has a seat on the ESRIF plenary, while the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), University
of Tel Aviv and the Israeli emergency services are among the security experts advising the
ESRIF.
12) From terrorism to climate change - expanding the concept of security: The
‘Homeland Securitisation’ of European policies across the justice and home affairs and
security fields is linked to an expanding concept of national security, one that now
encompasses everything from counter-terrorism to the ‘threat’ posed by climate change,
organised crime and pandemics. The report examines the similarities between the recent
national security strategies of France, Germany and the United Kingdom and the EU
Security Strategies of 2003 and 2008, and notes how quickly these all encompassing
definitions of homeland security have come to dominate western policy-making circles. This
is likely to be a permanent legacy of the ‘war on terror’.
13) Integration of EU security and defence bodies: The high-tech strategies developed to
facilitate counter-terrorism, border controls and surveillance, crisis management,
peacekeeping and other new techniques of government are increasingly linked to the
strategies and technologies of war. This shift is linked to the increasing use of military
technology and personnel for law enforcement and security purposes; the increasing
diversification of the military-industrial complex into Homeland Security; and the expanded
remits given to security and defence agencies in the 21st century. The report foresees an
increasing integration of the activities of the European Defence Agency and the ESRP and a
wider convergence of powers in the form of integrated EU security and defence bodies.
14) Full Spectrum Dominance – a new model for European security? The report
concludes that despite the often benign intent behind collaborative European ‘research’ into
integrated land, air, maritime, space and cyber-surveillance systems, the EU’s security and
R&D policy is coalescing around a high-tech blueprint for a new kind of security. It
envisages a future world of red zones and green zones; external borders controlled by
military force and internally by a sprawling network of physical and virtual security
checkpoints; public spaces, micro-states and ‘mega events’ policed by high-tech
surveillance systems and rapid reaction forces; and the increasing integration of defence
and security functions at home and abroad.
15) Wide ranging review of the ESRP urgently needed: The report calls for a full audit of
the development and implementation of the ESRP; a redefinition of its priorities to put
human rights and social justice at the heart of the programme; reorganisation of the current
governance structure to ensure independent scrutiny and democratic control of the ESRP; a
freeze on EU surveillance-enabling legislation; regulation of Homeland Security exports; and
a programme of measures to bring law enforcement technology and related police powers
under democratic and judicial control.
It seems the Czech Cabinet is due to meet in emergency session today to try and urgently persuade their President (Vaclav Klaus) to sign the Lisbon Treaty.
France and Germany, who it is claimed are the "main drivers" behind the Lisbon Treaty, are said to be particularly impatient.
Some think President Klaus has deliberately set out on "wrecking" course of action which depends on the election of a conservative government in the UK, and their longstanding pledge to carry out a referendum on the treaty: if it remains unratified in any of the other states at the time of an election victory for the conservatives.
Not only that, "Prime Minister in Waiting Cameron" has in the past promised to personally lead the "NO" campaign: if there ever is a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the UK.
Many might think that a referendum in the UK (or two perhaps?) would be VERY well worth waiting for?
For more on today's Czech Cabinet meeting please see at http://www.sofiaecho.com/2009/10/12/798461_czech-cabine...passe
When all have signed the Lisbon Trteaty will be put in place, an EU Army will be raised with folk from every country.
And when the body bags come to Ireland we will see tears from those who voted yes.
It appears that the "crisis" over the EU Lisbon Treaty has deepened after the Czech Republic's government apparently backed down yesterday (i.e. October 12th 2009) in a confrontation with President Vaclav Klaus over his refusal to sign the text.
Consequently, concern in the "Pro Lisbon Camp" is at present growing across the EU it seems, because of fears that the unresolved Czech situation could drag ratification out into next year, and thus result in a British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if David Cameron wins a general election next spring (as he is at present widely expected to do).
Related link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/630....html
According to a Time Magazine article published last Friday (i.e. October 23rd 2009), Czech President Vaclav Klaus still has lots of public support for his opposition to the Lisbon Treaty.
Will that be enough though to prevent the "rulings elite" bullies from forcing him to sign up to this outrageous and extremely scary recipe for rampant tyranny in Europe and elsewhere in the world?
The Time article in question can be viewed at: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1931664,0....html